1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to telecommunication systems. More specifically, systems and methods for automatic provisioning of equipment, topology, and end-to-end paths for SONET networks are disclosed.
2. Description of Related Art
With the maturation of the computer and data networking technologies, terabits of complex, mixed data traffic types are increasingly transmitted via high-speed and high-capacity fiber optic based networks such as Synchronous Optical Network (SONET). SONET is a set of ANSI telecommunications standards for synchronous optical networks. SONET has become a high bandwidth fiber optic based transport system that provides the foundation for linking high-speed network switches and multiplexers. In particular, SONET provides a standard operating environment for managing high bandwidth services and incorporates multiplexing, service mappings, and standardized interfaces such that commercial vendors can develop interconnecting technologies.
SONET utilizes the Synchronous Transport Signal (STS), at a line rate of 51.84 Mbps, for communication between nodes of a SONET network to allow control, provisioning, administration, and security. The STS is comprised of payload information and signaling and protocol overhead. Because two ends of a SONET transmission may vary in format and speed, data is generally converted to the STS format, transmitted, and converted into the appropriate user format when the data is received.
A SONET network is generally laid out in a ring topology in which two or more transmission paths over fiber optic cables are provided between network nodes or network elements (NEs) to form a closed loop. Time division multiplexing (TDM) is utilized to simultaneously transmit multiple data streams over the transmission paths. Traffic transmitted over a SONET ring may include standard synchronous data such as DS1 and DS3 data, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) data, and various types of packet data such as Internet Protocol (IP) and frame relay (FR) data.
Various protection mechanisms are defined for SONET networks to provide redundancy and protection against transmission failures. Defects or failures on a SONET ring may result from various causes such as defects in the fiber optic cable, problems in the network elements or nodes, and failures in the processing of a transmitted or received signal. Examples of SONET protection mechanisms include 1+1, 1:1 (Bellcore GR-253-CORE), unidirectional path switched ring or UPSR (Bellcore GR-1400-CORE), and bi-directional line switched ring or BLSR (Bellcore GR-1230-CORE). SONET rings typically include one or more pairs of working paths and protection paths. If a working path fails, the bandwidth capacity of the protection path is utilized. Various protection mechanisms for monitoring, protecting, and recovering specific types of traffic such as ATM, frame relay, and IP may be utilized in conjunction with or independently of the dedicated SONET protection mechanisms.
Each network node within the SONET network may include a number of devices and facilities. Each device in the network are manually provisioned before it can be utilized in the SONET network. Such manual provisioning may include system provisioning, topology provisioning, and end-to-end path provisioning. System provisioning typically includes equipment and facilities provisioning. Manual provisioning is difficult, tedious, time consuming, costly, and error prone. In addition, once a human error is made, the error is often difficult to pin point and identify. In addition, manual provisioning is not dynamic, lacks scalability, and may not be optimized. Moreover, network traffic is complex and network environment often changes quickly, further rendering the manual provisioning process more difficult, time consuming, and error prone.
Thus, what is needed is a better provisioning system and method that preferably reduces human errors, is less time consuming and is more cost effective.